Those Three Words
by TheLightBehindHerEyes
Summary: Such small words, that held so much meaning. Words that could only mean that much to the two of them, yet as she laid on her deathbed, still they managed to mean so much more.


The young girl laid on her bed, her long locks of milky-brown hair splayed out behind her. Her hazel eyes struggled to stay open, and she stifled a yawn as a hand threaded its fingers through her own.

"You can sleep now, Jude. It's okay to be tired."

Jude turned her head slightly to look at the man sitting by her bed. His apparel had been the butt of all of her jokes that day, since – as Jude said, although the man denied it firmly every time – his bowtie was _so_ out of style. The corner of her mouth turned up in a small smile as she peered at the odd yet wonderful man beside her. She opened her mouth to say something but her gave her hand a soft squeeze to silence her.

"Rest, Judith. You'll need your strength for tomorrow, when we can have even more adventures." She looked up to his face, barely distinguishable in the dark light of her bedroom, and even though she truly did still want to talk with the amazing man, and have him tell her stories of impossible places and lands only heard of in fairy tales, her body was getting the best of her and a yawn escaped her lips. Jude sank into her bed a little more, and closed her eyes. A soft kiss was pressed to her forehead, and she smiled ever-so-slightly to the man who had become so close to her in the course of a single day.

"Goodnight, my Doctor."

With that, the Doctor carefully removed his hand from her smaller one and exited her room, closing her door with only a slight 'click.' He knew that it would be a while until she woke up; eleven hours at least. They had seen and done so much that day, he knew that the little ten-year-old would need some time to rest. So after walking down a short hallway that led to the console room, he began to fiddle with some of the controls.

The Doctor knew that it would be a long eleven hours.

* * *

The Doctor burst into the room, leaping over toppled-over machinery and bodies. There was only one thing he was focused on at the moment, and that was the seventeen-year-old who had been there for it all: Judith.

Determination coursed through his veins as he shot around a corner, only to nearly trip over exactly who he had been looking for.

A small whimper was what alerted him of her presence, otherwise he might have kept on running, but at the sound of her whimper he turned on his heel. The Doctor's eyes widened as he looked down to Judith, to his precious Judith.

Blood poured heavily from a wound in her side, and there was another cut right in front of her heart, just above the aorta.

"They- were . . . they weren't tr-trying to s-save us, they were a-aiming to k-kill." Both anger and sorrow coursed through him as he saw how her face became more and more ashen as each moment passed by. He could tell that even saying such a small sentence took a lot out of her.

She barely managed to hold up her left arm, and he peered at it to see another, even deeper cut, almost going through the whole of her arm. It reached from her wrist to her elbow. The blood drained from his face, not only because he saw how much blood loss she truly had, but also because he knew that they didn't have much time left, and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Just as that ghastly thought appeared, he cast it out of his mind, only to be replaced with another terrible observation: Deep inside the cut, a dark blue substance was slowly spreading through her blood. _Poison._

The Doctor watched helplessly as Jude's arm fell back to her side, unable to hold it any longer. A tear escaped her eyes as she looked towards the Doctor, cracking a small smile.

"T-this is it, Doc. I've had so much f-fun with you." Tears of his own came to his eyes, and he shook his head, in part to get rid of them and in part because he didn't want to hear what he knew would have to be said.

"Th-thank you, real-really. I w-wouldn't trade the-these times for the- for the world." The Doctor quirked the tip of his lips up into a tiny smile, but he couldn't bring himself to smile all the way. Not with his best friend slowly dying right in front of him.

"Please- please don't leave me," he murmured, taking her hand in his. Her skin was cold to the touch, which only set off even more alarm bells inside of his head, even though he knew that by this point there was nothing he could do. Nothing at all.

The Doctor glanced up at her, only to see that her eyes were becoming slightly faint. His grip on her hand tightened, and he murmured a broken ' _no!_ '

Judith forced herself back into reality, if only for a moment. She gazed at the Doctor. At _her_ Doctor. The man who had practically raised her from age ten and up. The man who had shown her worlds beyond her imagination, shown her crimson stars and silent civilizations, entire nebulas controlled only by thought. The man who she had grown to trust more than anyone in the world, more than anyone in the entire universe.

The man who gave her life, and taught her to relish the beauty of simply being _alive. . ._

 _Alive._ As a wise woman had once said, it's not a sad word, but it's sad when it's over, and quite clearly her own life was rapidly coming to an end. Luckily, she had the man who started it right by her.

She tore herself away from her thoughts, and looked up at the man above her. Tears were leaking down his cheeks, and even thought she couldn't feel it anymore, she knew that she was weeping too. However, she wasn't weeping for herself, no, she was weeping for what her death was going to do to the man who already carried the weight of so many lives on his shoulders.

Jude stared at the Doctor. She felt as though no words could ever explain how much she was feeling, as the poison and blood loss started to tear at her senses. So instead of attempting to think of a long, intricate sentence to explain how she felt, she spoke to him three simple words, words that- although small, held so much meaning. The words that had marked the beginning of an era of adventure and joy for the pair of them.

The words that had made them who they were that day, and she whispered them to him in her final, dying breath.

As she gazed into the starry, endless oceans of his eyes, she whispered those three, small words to him as a final goodbye. Just as her hazel eyes shimmered with unshed tears and began to dim, their signature shine leaving them forever to the folds of time, she spoke those words to him, and those words were simply:  
"Goodnight, my Doctor."


End file.
